Apple

A display that resizes as your face moves? Apple zooms in

Your iPhone or iPad may one day be able to resize its display based on the distance from your face.

Filed today with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a new Apple patent application dubbed "Scaling of Visual Content Based Upon User Proximity," details a method by which the display automatically scales as your face moves toward or away from the device.

The content on the display would initially size itself based on how near or far your face is. Moving your face (or the device) would then trigger the display to resize itself accordingly based on a different scaling factor.… Read more

Rumor Has It: We'd take an iTV over an iPhone 5S any day

The biggest rumor of the week insists that Apple is going to have a surprisingly exciting first quarter next year. We discuss whether it makes any sense to flout the patterns of history and release three brand-new devices at the start of the year so soon after the holidays and hot on the heels of the iPad 4 and iPhone 5 releases. Are you willing to bet on it? Vote in the polls in our interactive video player, and here in the blog post.

We also discuss a rumor about Facebook that Emily thinks is the epitome of creepy, and … Read more

iPad Mini won't eat into its big brother's sales, analyst says

Apple's iPad Mini won't cannibalize too many fourth-generation iPad sales, a new study has found.

Analyst Cowen and Co. recently conducted a survey of 1,225 U.S. adults on their upcoming tablet buying preferences. According to All Things Digital, which obtained a copy of the survey's results, just 12 percent of respondents said that they would buy an iPad Mini within the next 18 months. Out of that group, just 16.6 percent said that they were buying the tablet to replace it with another tablet. Moreover, just 29 percent of those folks said that the … Read more

Smartphone sales up 47 percent as Android increases its lead

While worldwide phone sales fell slightly during the third quarter, sales of smartphones are continuing to rise, according to new figures from Gartner.

More than 427 million phones were sold in total during the third quarter, 3 percent down on the same quarter a year ago, Gartner said, but up slightly on the 419 million devices shipped in the second quarter.

Meanwhile, smartphone sales are continuing their upward trajectory compared to feature phones -- 169 million smartphones were sold during the quarter, an increase of 47 percent year-on-year.

Samsung, Nokia and Apple remain the top three vendors by sales for … Read more

How to share reminders in OS X

In OS X Mountain Lion, Apple included a few of its iOS applications, one of which is the Reminders app for setting up and organizing to-do lists. Reminders used to be part of Apple's iCal feature, but has migrated to a separate app that interfaces with the Calendar for all your Apple devices and with Apple's iCloud service. This unified setup not only makes sharing reminders among devices easy, but also offers a platform for sharing reminders among different iCloud users.

While a little redundant with standard calendar events, reminders are convenient alternatives since they are maintained in … Read more

Apple releases second beta of iOS 6.1 to developers

Registered Apple developers can now grab the second beta of iOS 6.1.

Released yesterday, Beta 2 comes about two weeks after the first and offers the usual bug fixes along with some improvements.

The new build lets app developers take advantage of Apple's maps service, so that users can search for specific places based on a simple term. As one example, cited by AppleInsider, people could search for the word "coffee" to find names, locations, and other details of local coffee bars.

iOS 6.1 will include a better explanation of Passbook for users who don'… Read more

iPad will lose market dominance to Android next year, says analyst

Android will finally knock the iPad off its throne next year, at least according to one analyst.

Apple's iPad has remained the king of the tablet market for the past few years but has gradually shed market share to the onslaught of Android devices. For the third quarter of 2010, the iPad enjoyed an 87 percent cut of the market, according to IDC. For this year's third quarter, that number had fallen to just 50.4 percent.

That trend will continue as the share collectively owned by Android tablets surpasses that of the iPad in the first half … Read more

Apple predicted to generate up to $280 million a year in HTC deal

Apple's patent-licensing settlement with HTC might actually net the company some more cash.

Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said in a note to researchers today that he has spoken with industry sources who told him that Apple will generate about $6 to $8 in licensing fees for each smartphone HTC ships in 2013. Based on his estimate of 30 million to 35 million shipments, Wu believes that Apple will generate $180 million to $280 million in licensing fees.

Apple and HTC announced yesterday that they had inked a 10-year licensing deal to settle patent disputes. The companies said that … Read more

LTE iPads arriving this week, reports say

Some fourth-generation iPad buyers may receive the LTE version of the device as soon as Friday, according to new reports.

MacRumors and 9To5Mac are reporting that pre-orders of the cellular-enabled model iPad are now on their way to customers and should arrive at their homes this week.

The expected arrival date is largely in line with what Apple said when announcing the device last month. The Cupertino, Calif., electronics giant released the Wi-Fi-only version of the tablet on November 2, but the 4G LTE wireless model was slated to hit shelves a couple weeks later. The same was true for … Read more